check out his positions

Let's take just two , drugs and crime-

 Rand Paul on Crime  

Blacks look who's in prison & conclude cops out to get them. (Aug 2014)
Let convicted felons regain the right to vote. (Jun 2014)
Justice cannot occur without a trial, especially minorities. (Mar 2014)
Defend trial by jury & oppose unlawful searches. (Feb 2013)
Stop over-criminalization in vague laws like Lacey Act. (Sep 2012)
Lacey Act applies foreign laws to US citizens. (Sep 2012)
Many criminal statutes lack requirement of criminal intent. (Sep 2012)
  Rand Paul on Drugs  

Jailing people for 10 years for marijuana is ridiculous. (Nov 2014)
War on drugs has unintentionally had a racial outcome. (Jun 2014)
Don't promote marijuana but don't jail non-violent criminals. (Mar 2013)
Tackle drug problem; no one cares where funding comes from. (Oct 2010)
Community treatment instead of federal anti-drug programs. (Aug 2010)
Drug abuse isn't a pressing issue; 10-20 years is too harsh. (Aug 2010)
Favors legalizing medical marijuana. (May 2010)
Exclude industrial hemp from definition of marijuana. (Aug 2012)
Exempt industrial hemp from marijuana laws. (Feb 2013)

That's the most frustrating part to me...why can't the Brand D party as a whole get these two simple things right?  Why drive an otherwise boiler-plate lefty into the arms of libertarianism, with all it's flaws, by getting these two big issues so very very wrong?

To be fair, Obama has done a couple good things on the criminal justice front, but it's not nearly enough.  I hope he goes buck wild with pardons during the next two years...steal some of this thunder back from the libertarians.  To be fair squared, there are a few Democrats who are right on this stuff too, but they are outliers in their own party, much like Paul is in his.

Sh*t I might not even know what libertarianism is if not for Bill Clinton's unprecedented expansion of The War on Drugs and that evil Crime Bill he signed, and the war mongering foreign policy of both major parties/philosophies over the last 60 years or so.

I'm pretty sure after 8 years of GWB that is hardly a disqualifer.

Also the term limits for congress thing is indeed a stupid idea.  It's also a very popular one.  Particularly with right wingers.  It's constitutionality notwithstanding.

And, his view on reproductive choice is solidly anti-choice....So, no so Libertarian.

All the issues I agree with, he has absolutely no control over as president.  I would love to see him single handily put the P back in privacy, but seriously...

Most things he can have a real impact on as Prez are not things I want him touching, like immigration and the budget.

I used to think--and ranted on at TL earlier (in response to kdog, I recall)--that the "Libertarian" group that Rand Paul used to define was one of the scariest prospects imaginable for this country.  Indifferent; unconcerned about the lot of any others in society other than self & maybe family; a man against any beneficial purpose of government; the mountain-man standing with his rifle behind the fence shooting at anyone who might need anything from his precious property; and, most ironically & especially, the elitist person of wealth from Kentucky who attracts horse wealth and others who look to him to keep the riff-raff from upsetting their apple-cart.  He personifies "let them eat cake."  But now ....

Now, he is bit by bit shedding the cleverly constructed trappings designed to appeal to the unsuspecting youth and the hardened isolationist.  Why?  Because he really believes he can be President ... and, he has to fit in and compromise.  His anti-foreign involvement propaganda was just that ... it was cr#p designed to appeal to those who sincerely seek to avoid harmful, killing, unwise military excursions ... yet, the reality has always been his isolationist stance based upon avoiding any foreign interactions akin to monetary assistance for the needy from tragedy and other geographical catastrophes.  Yep, he does seem sensible about his approach to drugs and sentencing, but what else ... because for a person ostensibly a fan of the most expansive personal freedoms, the reality can be seen in his opposition to freedom of choice and women and the need for healthcare.  Perhaps, freedom for him really always meant freedom for big business to get bigger while the regulations in place would be dismantled at a faster pace than even the other Repub crazies seem to admire.

Now, he is still talking to those who believe in the myth of utopian libertarianism.  He will rail against all government (about as anti-FDR model as one can be).  In the meantime, he courts the same big $$$$ ... and he will make the same deals that he pretends to abhor.  He is a hypocrite.  <BTW, one of his long-time advisors--an international lawyer with multiple homes from Aspen to London and lucrative Lexington horse farms in between--has argued since before R. Paul ran for Senate that this pathway would be one to watch. This neighbor of mine, who spends months on big-time fundraising events associated with this, is passionate about him ... as he is about his own wealth.>

 Rand talks a good game in generalities, but  he is not what he seems. When pressed, he is not any kind of lover of liberty.

He does not support women's reproductive rights. He does not support anything with regards to the lgbt community. He is hedging on legalizing weed. He is backing away from his opposition to military action.

He is just another right wing tea party nut job.

As a senator, Paul is firmly anti-choice, though he's right that he does tend to keep things fuzzy when asked if he believes that rape victims should be forced to carry their pregnancies to term. Paul has a perfect voting record with National Right to Life, the organization behind the the law that just effectively criminalized all abortions performed in Kansas during the second trimester. (That law, by the way, has no exceptions for rape or incest.)

And then there's his sponsorship of federal personhood legislation that would extend full legal rights to fertilized eggs, a move that bans most, if not all, abortion and could make certain forms of birth control illegal.

Because Paul's personhood proposal holds that the full weight of the 14th amendment kicks in "at the moment of fertilization," methods of birth control that may prevent implantation -- like the copper IUD when used as emergency contraception -- could become, as the New Yorker so bluntly put it last year, "weapons of murder."

Paul likes to talk about debate and philosophy, but there's little room for such nuance in Paul's actual positions on reproductive freedom. The murkiness comes in when he's asked to explain his voting record and policy priorities, which is when he tends to sound like more of a stoner than a red meat culture warrior. This isn't a new development, either. In a 2013 interview with CNN, Paul called his proposal to establish fetal personhood an "important philosophical discussion."

Huge difference, but perhaps without a distinction, because eventually, Paul will stop making sense altogether.

the other one is "small government"

It seems the narrative going on now is Bush and the anti Bush who they are pushing Cruz to be.